Fiona Blaikie, Dean, Faculty of Education

Senior Administration

Fiona Blaikie, Dean, Faculty of Education

Fiona Blaikie has a PhD from the Department of Visual and Performing Arts in Education at the University of British Columbia. She has extensive experience as an educational administrator, including five years from 2003 to 2008, as Director of the Joint PhD Program in Educational Studies. Blaikie is an internationally recognized scholar in art education with an extensive record of publications and conference presentations. In the context of an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts and years of art making, Blaikie examines aesthetics as hegemonic, socially and contextually situated and in/accessible. Her scholarship has evolved from a focus on aesthetic values inherent in assessment of studio art to arts-informed research in which both data collection and findings are informed by the arts. Dissemination is intended to extend and impact beyond the Academy. A practicing artist, her artwork has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections around the world, including the Bronfman Foundation.

Blaikie’s awards and honours include the Canadian Society for Education through Art Affiliate Award for Ontario, and work as Deputy Chief Examiner of Visual Arts for the International Baccaluareate Organization. Her work as a leader in art education is extensive: Currently she is a World Councilor for the International Society for Education through on Art, a Past President of the Canadian Society for Education through Art, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian National Arts and Learning Symposium. Blaikie was a member of the Canadian delegation to the May 2010 UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education in June 2010 in Seoul, Korea.

She values community service and partnerships. Writing a proposal in 2001 for Trillium Funding with partners including local arts organizations and school boards, she created the award-winning Community Arts and Heritage Education Project (CAHEP) in Northern Ontario. Serving as chair of the Board of Directors for the first five years, CAHEP continues to flourish, and through the Ministry of Culture, Ontario, has become a model for community arts programming in the province.

Her valued former graduate and undergraduate students are now working as professors, teachers, administrators, arts educators and practicing artists in schools, universities, art galleries and educational centres around the world. Blaikie enjoys immensely her work as the Dean of the Faculty of Education at Brock University, where her focus is on serving the contextually situated interests of the whole by making policies work for programs and people.